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Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Apologizes For Plagiarizing

Sari Horwitz of The Washington Post, who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her work on problems in the child-welfare agencies of Washington, D.C., has been suspended by the Post for three months after it was learned that she copied substantial parts of stories by the Arizona Republicwhen she was reporting on the aftermath of the Jan. 8 shooting rampage in Tucson.

According to the Post, Horwitz issued a statement in which she says, in part:

"I am deeply sorry. To our readers, my friends and colleagues, my editors, and to the paper I love, I want to apologize. ... Under the pressure of tight deadlines, I did something I have never done in my entire career. I used another newspaper's work as if it were my own. It was wrong. It was inexcusable. And it is one of the cardinal sins in journalism."

The Post says that earlier this month she lifted two paragraphs from one Republic story and 10 paragraphs from another. It has posted an "editor's note" apologizing to the Republicand its readers.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.